2022-06-08: Can I possibly take what you're offering?
- Log: Can I possibly take what you're offering?
- Cast: Yuliana Dispersal, Athrusa Hsieh
- Where: Nouvelle Tokyo
- Date: 2022-06-07
- Summary: Yuliana chances upon Athrusa, and takes the opportunity to lay down some ground rules about her terrorist side-activities. To her surprise, Athrusa pre-empts her with patient confidentiality. Yuliana only breaks down further from there, but even though it's frightening, Athrusa sticks to her guns.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Nouvelle Tokyo! Wonderful place. Shame about the crime. Yuliana Dispersal, head of the Nega Force, would never pour kerosene onto that sudden fire; it doesn't serve her purposes in the slightest. Anyway, now we've established why Yuliana isn't here -- because she's obviously here to help clean up after that villain Julia Ampere! -- we can get to the most important part of this message:
The way she's currently strolling down the street in her characteristic dark suit, with a yellow-and-orange shawl tucked about her neck, drinking an iced soda beverage from a broad straw and not doing any crimes at all. Zero crimes. Not one!
Siiiip.
<Pose Tracker> Athrusa Hsieh has posed.
Doctor Baihe-Athrusa is currently having an extremely normal day, standing near the back of a crowd onlooking to a street idol performance. She definitely stands out like a sore thumb, with her bizarre doctorly appearance and somewhat uncanny face nonetheless; she also sports the telltale signs of having gone exploring, because she's carrying a plush Tarabaman with the tag still on (no doubt having been suckered into buying one by a crier), and a sinfully cream-topped frappe in the other (no doubt having been suckered into buying one by an ad).
She hasn't noticed Yuliana walking up on her. How is this high-profile, high-value target SO EASY to sneak up on and find?????
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Great question!
It would surely look very clever if Yuliana had planned this, too; it's probably not difficult to imagine the oversized sack she'd get someone to bring out surreptitiously. (It might not be a literal sack, but it COULD be a literal sack.) This makes it all the more tragic, then...
... that it's a complete coincidence which has Yuliana diverting to go investigate that street performance. She didn't expect to see Athrusa here in the slightest.
Once she does see her, though -- one visible eye widening and narrowing in turn -- she does, indeed, smoothly move from strolling to sneaking. It doesn't visibly look much different, except that she ceases all her incidental noise.
It might be difficult to catch the way she places her beverage on a storefront windowsill as she passes; with no hesitation or even a glance beside her, she simply is holding a drink in one moment, and isn't holding one the next.
She has a lot of things to think about, on the approach. Can she restrain her alone? Bluffing, of course, is always an option; the good Doctor has always taken people at their word. But her capacity to escape these situations really demands the sort of equipment Yuliana simply doesn't have on hand, at the moment. And, of course, she's Yuliana at the moment.
She still hasn't figured out just who to hand Athrusa to, given two of her loyalties are braying for the same hare. Small mercy Elisa has no interest in her, perhaps.
(Well, Yuliana doesn't think she does, anyway.)
But she supposes, to herself, that's quite the sticking question -- given their last meeting. Given what Athrusa knows. So when Yuliana claps a hand on Athrusa's shoulder, entirely out of nowhere, this is what she says:
"I'm not here to apprehend you today. ... let's talk."
She says she's not here to catch Athrusa, but the way her fingers tighten just so might suggest she doesn't consider the conversation an optional matter, either.
<Pose Tracker> Athrusa Hsieh has posed.
Athrusa is quiet, her attention wrapped in the performance -- but it isn't the usual whole-hearted attention of someone ensconced in music, or entranced by the sight of their very idols; it's someone who's paying their full attention to try to learn and understand and... having a really confusing time of it.
Then suddenly a hand is on her shoulder. She blinks a few times, and Yuliana speaks immediately about her intent.
"... Verdiska."
Wow, she took her fake name as a change of name to heart, huh?
"I understand." She looks to her possessions, then puts the plush in a small bag, before deciding that her half-drunk frappe is too much and--
You can tell Athrusa is a hero, on the other hand, because she looks at the recycling bin and struggles because it still has non-recyclable material in it. She takes one for planet Earth and immediately vacuums the rest of her drink in three seconds, before placing it in the bin.
She appears CRUSHED right afterwards. "Let us go."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Well, Yuliana supposes -- at least if Athrusa's been referring to her that way, she won't have immediately scuttled her prospects. There's a little flinch at the corner of her lip to hear her put the name to her real face, but the best she can hope is that everyone here is occupied by that street performance.
She raises a brow as Athrusa insists on slamming her frappe for the planet, but doesn't say anything about it. There are two types of people in the world, she supposes.
Athrusa looks crushed, but conveniently, that's not Yuliana's problem! In a gesture which appears entirely companionable, she pats her on the shoulder, and then slips her hand down to grasp the other woman's, instead. This is just a case of two ladies on the town, obviously; nothing to worry about.
Particularly when Yuliana leads them over to the nearest likely culprit...
... karaoke?!
She keeps an eye on Athrusa as she pays for a private booth, and makes sure she piles on in. Yuliana doesn't particularly care what song's playing, as she turns it up; the point is that they have plenty of noise, in here.
She seats herself down on the couch, and makes sure Athrusa does, too.
Let us note that there is contemplative J-Pop playing as Yuliana says, loud enough for someone beside her to hear and not at all loud enough for anyone else:
"You're not here to sing," just to crush those dreams as a free action. "But we need to get some things straight, Doctor B-- Athrusa," Yuliana corrects herself halfway through the name, shaking her head. It's some measure of olive branch, anyway.
"The last time we met... I wonder if you've told anyone about that. No, let me be specific: what did you tell them?" She sounds casual enough, but the way she's got her eye on Athrusa... it must be more serious than that. "I'd like to hear your understanding of the situation."
<Pose Tracker> Athrusa Hsieh has posed.
Athrusa is, by every measure of how secret agents are supposed to behave, a pretty bad one if she's just running off with the enemy to karaoke! She appears to absorb the place with her undue attention, looking at the screens and attract PVs as they proceed into a room and... sits quietly.
Yuliana advises that she's not here to sing, and the good Doctor doesn't react--
But that ahoge of hers sure does deflate a little.
Baihe. Baihe... that was the name that was important to her. "We did not have much opportunity to speak. I tended to her wounds and left, as undue questions from the Federation would be unpreferrable for me as well."
Why is she saying this, though?
Her gray eyes move back to Yuliana's. "Besides, it felt..." A pause. "... ... as if I was breaching my patient's confidentiality." She doesn't sound sure, as she says that, like... that's the first thing that comes to her mind, but she's not certain of her own emotions and reasons.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
So Baihe didn't want to answer the Federation's questions... no wonder, Yuliana supposes, with an evaluative expression. The REA is a member of the Federation. The friend of my enemy, as they say, is also my enemy.
(Is that really how Yuliana remembers that saying? ... that might explain a few things.)
What Athrusa says next, though, is visibly confusing. Yuliana frowns, a hand reaching up to dig her fingers into her opposite arm. "That's how... you see it?" Yuliana starts, sentence slowing in the middle. "You'll need to help me to understand that one," reflexively, she falls into interrogative language, positioning it as a favour she can do for her, positioning herself as someone who wants to be on her side. Something a little more honest, perhaps, in the way she adds: "You don't want what I'm offering you. Why keep my secrets?"
Yuliana, of course, intended to pressure her into not telling them from the outset -- but being met with it immediately is jarring. Jarring enough to let slip that it is a secret, even, which is a classic rookie mistake.
<Pose Tracker> Athrusa Hsieh has posed.
Athrusa laces her fingers together as she sits, as loud music blares around the booth with no one singing. She seems so occupied with what she's done, with how she's decided to describe it, that she doesn't immediately jump on it being a secret, even if it... well, it's not surprising, given the REA, she supposes. The Federation isn't a unified whole it wants to present itself as in its best of times. Cross-bloc espionage happens all the time.
"Patients... come and go, do they not? In my time in the laboratory, in my time outside, they seek assistance, or I am ordered to provide them assistance... it is usually plain to see when that exchange ends."
She pauses.
"I was still... assigned to your care when they took me. It does not feel... correct. In my two meetings with you, I feel as if my work is not yet done." She breathes in, gently.
"Of course, you are free to say otherwise. Officially, I am not a doctor under their employ, neither do I wish to return, hence our conflict. The old me, I believe, would have simply believed this, and yet..."
Athrusa is a bit more animated as she looks square to Yuliana's eyes. "I feel that you still need my care. ... is that a foolish conclusion to come to?"
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Still... assigned to her.
Yuliana's frown deepens; her other hand comes up, to grasp her elbow, in a gesture which isn't quite crossing her arms but is at least most of the way there. She came here to enforce her will -- so why does she suddenly feel like the one under threat?
For a moment, she's quiet; she swallows, against a lump in her throat. And then, with all the animation she'd lost listening to that explanation, Yuliana shakes her head -- the whole upper half of herself, really, for all the violence in the motion. She clutches her arms with all the ferocity of someone who will fly apart without the effort.
"Of COURSE I still need your care! Don't you remember?! I'm telling you it's horrific miserable! Each new avenue and discovery is another level of hell for me! If you'd just abandon this Athrusa nonsense and come back, I--!!"
Get it together, Yuliana tells herself, sharply, even as she buries her face in a hand. She draws in a breath, fills her lungs, lowers her hand; she's disrupted the bangs across her face enough that she can glare at Athrusa with both eyes, that scar she did so much to help.
"No... no, I'm just fine," Yuliana says, fixing a smile over her cheeks, all wound up like a tightened screw. "With the protection help I'm getting now... I'm receiving the finest care. Without disturbance shall I open, to that chosen day... she'll not see an inch of me hurt. Hahaha... "
She's not fine, even if she sounds calmer, saying that; this sort of emotional dysregulation is a surefire sign that something has set off any number of the issues Yuliana deals with.
<Pose Tracker> Athrusa Hsieh has posed.
Yuliana's outburst is sudden and full of energy; but Athrusa is... still not taken to being startled, it seems. It doesn't look like she's any less affected, of course; she's navigating difficult waters as she once did, perhaps with less certainty if only because the capacity for self-thought has been granted to her now.
"But I... if I return, there is no telling what they would do to me. And then, I would truly be in no position to provide care," Athrusa quietly says, as Yuliana tries to recoup herself, but...
What she says after...
"You have another to care for you?" Athrusa softly asks, but a part of her wonders about what Yuliana says. "The 'chosen day'? ... I see. But..."
She glances aside. "You understand I maintain my own secrets, even yours. It is irregular, but if it would aid you any to see me, at any time..."
The white-haired Innovade lets out a conflicted breath, then puts a card down. It's contact details, the encrypted kind. Away from Shuffle channels, away from the Federation; the Doctor maintains her own, it seems.
"I would like..." Those words are meaningful, something the old Doctor would never say, "... to still be a part of your care... your life."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
What they'd do to her? Yuliana can hazard a guess. Baihe might even deserve it. (The way she deserved it.)
There's a pit in her stomach, as Athrusa talks about what would aid her, and maybe Yuliana can tell herself it's disgust. Her teeth grit; her hand tightens, against her arm.
"You IDIOT!" Yuliana yells, and unfolds in an instant to grab -- not the card from the table, but the karaoke remote to its side. This she pitches against the wall of the booth, with great force; its pieces fly in several directions. She leans forward, to jab her finger into Athrusa's chest.
Her eyes are damp. It does nothing for the anger in her voice.
"They want you, don't you understand?! They want you! The Republic and Celestial Being both! What would you have me DO, then?! I must deliver you to someone! There are eyes on all of us, and to all of us, expectations! Would you have me slip those bonds?! Your world would shatter!" Too honest; it's too honest. It's too honest, but Yuliana...
She can't pretend she doesn't feel anything for the one doctor who's always looked out for her.
Her hand comes down on Athrusa's shoulder, and slides, down the side of her arm, as her head sags. "So don't say you want to care for me... don't say something as stupid as you want to be part of my life..! If you never saw me again, your life would be better for it! I don't need anyone else! No, I certainly... I certainly, certainly..." Her breath hitches; she sobs, as her fingers tighten.
"Go," she hisses, through a tight throat, with a light shove, as Yuliana turns herself the other direction on the couch. She brings her legs up onto it; curls her arms around them. "Just go."
It's too much kindness to offer her, she thinks, with acid -- but let's say Yuliana doesn't want to be seen in public in this state.
<Pose Tracker> Athrusa Hsieh has posed.
There's a loud plastic crunch as the karaoke remote crunches against the wall, and Athrusa barely hangs on; her eyes haven't closed and she hasn't wavered, but the sheer force of Yuliana's intimidating presence does take its toll on her. As her finger thrusts down on her chest.
"Celestial... Being..." Athrusa finds herself focusing, her eyes acting a little oddly as if a waver of memory flickers heavily, painfully across her mind. "Why do I remember that name...?"
... anyone else probably would be reminded Celestial Being made a world-wide proclamation to wage war against war, but the way the good Doctor says 'remember', it's clear she's not talking about that.
Visibly, it distresses her. "The expectations set upon you have always been heavy. I understand this and yet..."
She's interrupted, because Yuliana clamps down on her shoulder, as she insists she shouldn't care for her. That she wants to be part of her life. If she were to never see her again, her life would be better...
"... I am truly a fool, and I understand this," Athrusa breathes out. "Because I do not wish to say I do not care. No matter what the world threatens. I do not wish to be cowed by such a thing..."
Yuliana urges her to go, and even though emotions are still largely a puzzle to her, Athrusa understands well that one has limits. She turns on the couch, curling her arms around her. It wounds her to see her this way, Athrusa finds herself observing.
The old Doctor Baihe goes, when she is told to go. The old, good Doctor Baihe understands when a patient needs their space. She is a professional, courteous, respectful. Safe.
Athrusa is a fool who takes a risk and quietly wraps her arms around her to give her a hug instead.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Ever since she entered the project, Yuliana has had abysmal emotional regulation. She is a violent woman, just as she is a violently miserable one, just as her laughter can break her to bits. That she is not directly turning her rage on Athrusa may be little comfort.
(Her psychological surveys before she underwent those experiments spoke of a much different person; she wasn't always this unstable. These days, the best which can be said is that she is stable in her instability.)
She hears the way Athrusa recognises Celestial Being -- of course she does. She doesn't stop to tear it out. She is a force difficult to halt in place.
But -- Yuliana at least expected Baihe to leave, when she told her to leave. To take that much sense, and go. She was always one of the better ones about listening to when Yuliana had hit her limit, rather than pushing herself to the point they had to intervene.
What she doesn't expect is arms coming in from behind, Athrusa behind her. "Y--you...!" Tragically, Yuliana's invective is crippled at the knees by the way it comes out choked and strained.
She stiffens; after a long moment, she sags, against her, and her hands pull in to grasp at Athrusa's encircling arms. She sobs, wordlessly, and feels a wretched creature.
"I wish you'd never left," she chokes out. "I wish you'd never left! If you'd never done something that stupid... if you hadn't betrayed us, you wouldn't be in this position, I wouldn't... how could you? How could you? How could you..?"
Her fingers curl in, around her hand. "I don't hate you," she says, and her voice is small. "You were always helping me... I don't know, I got attached... but I'm the one threatening you! I'm a threat to you..! I'm a threat to... l-look, you won't save yourself with, something like this..."
A laugh rips from her throat, and it's hardly something funny. "Haha... look at me... I'm always the one giving out the hugs, and now you've got me in a state like this... what kind of world is the one where I'm not acting?"
<Pose Tracker> Athrusa Hsieh has posed.
There's a torrent of emotions racing through Athrusa and ninety nine percent of them are absolutely foreign and confusing. She doesn't understand how she gets from A to B; it's more like she goes from A and takes a right angle at Theta and ends up at a boolean. A jumble of floating ideas, each independent and absolutely refusing to connect logically and make sense.
But she knows this is something she wants to do. That means something.
"... it is very regrettable, that I was taken, that I could not continue to provide for you," Athrusa expresses ruefully. "Perhaps, if circumstance could have allowed it. But that is not the position that has been dealt to me, and that has become a great difficulty to you."
Some part of Athrusa is hung up on the word 'betrayed', because...
"Yuliana... it is a fact that I do not remember everything. But I am fairly certain I was not engaged as a double agent. If it was, it was not with my conscious knowing. Try as I might to uncover why I was taken, I still... am at odds. It still perplexes me why the lab chose to take me, Yuliana."
These words don't change the situation any, and Athrusa knows that, but she feels the need -- not out of some feign attempt to justify or defend herself, but...
Yuliana's voice is smaller now. She tells her of how she doesn't hate her, an expression that causes her eyes to widen gently.
That hollow laugh reaches her, as Yuliana ponders what world it is where she's not the one acting. "You say that, and yet... were there not many moments before? I do not think my office was one where you needed to put much pretense in."
The doctor lets go of the hug, gently, her hands slipping away softly; those same gloves, that same coat. That part of her hasn't changed.
"I understand that this does not change that you must chase me, be a threat to me. I... accept this, and request forgiveness for being a fool."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"Tch... so that makes one of us," Yuliana mutters, as Athrusa insists she isn't a double agent. How many loyalties is she up to, now? Three, not counting the criminal element on the side? Her dalliances will be the end of her.
"Not that kind of acting, sweetheart," she murmurs, and her attempt to reclaim some humour is shot through by the faintness of her voice.
Athrusa pulls away, and Yuliana slides a hand through her hair, still not quite looking at her in the process. "Fine... so maybe you didn't just leave. I... fine, fine... so it's complicated, everything is..."
It would be EASIER, if she could just blame Athrusa -- and there's still plenty of blame she can keep in her heart. Even so, she listens to Athrusa, telling her that part isn't so simple.
"I don't know why I'd forgive you," Yuliana says, fingers curling at the side of her head. "You're from an old chapter, is all... that's all. It shouldn't really matter."
Her teeth find her bottom lip. "But... if it means that much to you, take it! ... my forgiveness."
Yuliana, tracks down her cheeks, looks over her shoulder to the good Doctor; her brows arc up. "Now... leave me alone a while, would you..? I-- I have to think. Oh, leave your damnable card, if you like... but I'll not go out like this. I'm a Captain..."
She turns her jealousy-green gaze back forward, and waits with infinite stubbornness for her to leave. It's some time later before she manages to put herself together, and leave just the same.
She takes the card. It wouldn't be the first thing she's hidden.